Organizations that maintain and manufacture data centers face increasing bandwidth demands. In particular, the bandwidth requirement for routing switches is increasing dramatically due to the growth in data center size and due to the shift to higher bandwidth link standards, such as 10 Gb, 40 Gb, and 100 Gb Ethernet standards. However, simply scaling up the bandwidth of existing electronic switch designs can be problematic. The scope for increasing the data rate of electronic signals is often limited by signal integrity considerations. Also, increasing the bandwidth of electrical signal paths incurs a substantial penalty in both cost and power which may be impractical. The energy efficiency of the switching infrastructure in a modern data center has become an important consideration. As data rates increase, a greater proportion of the power consumed by network switches can be attributed to electronic interconnects. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that, as semiconductor technology improves, wires scale poorly with respect to transistors. The result is that switch manufacturers and users continue to seek interconnect solutions that provide for several generations of bandwidth scaling at reduced interconnect power, without increasing the overall system cost.